Knowledge
New Education Pedagogy, Technology, and AI
The real challenge is teaching the students these new-age skills as a way of life.
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a gap between education and students. The two years can be termed as a learning gorge for students. In spite of being well into the current school year, a few students are still not at the developmental stage that the educators expect. The challenge is for educators to address the issues and execute methods to support the students to continue their learning journey.
A few strategies discussed below may help facilitators take on this challenge, bridge the learning gaps, and recover learning loss among students. The pandemic has created a great deal of stress and anxiety. Functions like memory, attention span, planning, and organization of thoughts are essential for schoolwork as well as daily life. In order to create an optimal learning environment, educators must find ways to reduce stress.
This is possible in numerous ways – building a community of support and trust, developing a rapport with the students, adopting warm-up activities, incorporating breathing exercises, and creating low-stakes/formative assessments. These practices will help students build their skills, develop self-confidence and promote a growth mindset. The emphasis of new-age education has to be on better student engagement and social-emotional development, apart from nurturing a passion for excellence.
Make learning engaging
Stories have a privileged status and teachers can capitalize on that to engage students in order to enhance their learning. Great stories have conflict and persuasive characters. Moreover, stories are a part of many cultural traditions. Teachers can narrate anecdotes to connect classroom learning to the students’ lives. The more students find that their learning is relevant to their lives, the greater their connection and motivation to learn.
Value Local Knowledge
Valuing local knowledge means that teachers accept and appreciate the knowledge that students present in the classroom. This is an extension of the idea of narration to make effective connections. During the Pandemic, some children have experienced learning loss based on traditional academic metrics; many students experienced the benefits of being home with family, and perhaps taking on helpful roles at home that built their skills and relations. This approach of finding the benefits of the connections between home and school is referred to as “Funds of Knowledge”.
Social-Emotional Learning
Introducing students to social-emotional awareness helps them to manage their own emotions, develop empathy, and show care and concern for others. Once they learn to identify their own emotions and behaviors, they can identify the same in others and recognize their needs. Students learn to solve problems effectively and make responsible decisions. They learn to maintain healthy relationships, value people more than outward traits and behavior and appreciate rational and productive outcomes.
Social-emotional learning can be integrated with the existing academic curricula in literacy, math, and social studies. Schools should create a conducive environment and culture. They should learn values like respect and empathy in school, assemblies, classrooms, and sports arenas. Teachers should role model emotional and social balance in their interactions. The curriculum should not encourage rote learning. It has to be engaging and provoke critical thinking skills and lateral thinking skills.
Learning with Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Learning has made its way into the education industry by assisting instructors in duties like grading assignments, taking attendance, providing feedback, etc. AI has made administrative tasks more convenient and secure by involving remote proctoring using voice recognition, facial recognition, and onscreen marking. Students and teachers receive individual feedback on performance by using qualitative and quantitative data in their assignments. This saves time and effort.
Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning provide balanced learning.
With the synchronous learning pedagogy, students get the practice of learning in the comfort of their homes. This, however, requires an environment of concentration and understanding. With the potential of engaging students with attractive graphics and stories, AI helps to enhance learning outcomes. Students can develop a synchronous learning capability while being engaged in tasks that interest them.
AI has also made student assessment over remote learning a possibility. In recent years, online exams have risen in popularity. AI is revolutionizing the education industry in many ways – from assisting instructors with administrative duties such as grading assignments and taking attendance to provide teachers with feedback by assessing student test results. Besides, it is changing the way we conduct online tests by making them convenient and secure. The COVID-19 pandemic thrust more than one billion students globally into the world of online learning. Teachers adapted lesson plans designed for learning in a physical classroom to an online learning environment. With little time to prepare and a limited set of tools at their disposal, teachers spent their days educating students in real-time video conferences via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, and others.
Asynchronous learning offers flexibility. Though there is a deadline in sight, the learners can progress at their own pace and access the course at any time convenient to them. This mode of learning comprises educational activities, discussions, and assignments that engage students in structural learning via watching pre-recorded lecture videos, viewing video demonstrations, verbal and written assignments, research projects, student presentations, individual or group projects, and activities like quizzes, problem-solving, and games.
New Education Pedagogy For New Age Learning
The essence of ‘New Education Pedagogy’ is coherent with the ‘New Age Learning’ that involves practices of Technology and Artificial Intelligence. The introduction of such practices in everyday curriculum shall enhance student learning by the means of interactive and graphical elements. These not only provide an ecosystem of constant learning but also prove to be engaging. Such approaches are helpful for both remote sessions and in-person learning. Utilizing the principles of ‘Universal Design for Learning’ creates classrooms where everyone can grow.
AI combined with socio-awareness education shall maintain a balanced educational growth. This can be achieved by inviting role models as guests to schools or sharing their speeches over the remote-learning platforms. This would help the students to learn to be more assertive about what they want and become confident to communicate effectively with their parents, teachers, and other adults about their feelings and requirements.
The real challenge is teaching the students these new-age skills as a way of life. Activities in grade school can be merged with studies and curriculum. They can develop a sense of achieving tasks assigned, appreciating the accomplishment of tasks, and accepting if tasks are unsuccessful.
The amalgamation of learning practice with new education and artificial intelligence using technology readiness is prime in developing students’ cognition towards progressive and positive learning. By introducing such methodologies, we shall not only provide the educators with an infrastructure to disseminate the knowledge but also provide the students with a potentially stress-free learning environment that is developed with empathy and understanding.
Author – Shikha Banerjee, Principal, Seth Anandram Jaipuria School, Kanpur